Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Men of Fife Of
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DYS FXFESHIRE BIOGRAPHY. EDO county, as early as the reign of Kint; John Dysart and Baron Huntingtower, ; born in they afterwards acquireii Helmiiiaham, by 1794. He succeeded his grandmother, ma'-riage with the ilaugliter ami heir of Louisa, sixth Countess, in 1792". He mar- Helniingham of Helmingham ; aivl several ried in 1819 Mary Elizabeth, daughter of of them served the office of High Sheritf of .SweenyToone, Esq., and has issue— William Norfolk and Suffolk. Reference is made to Lionel Felix, Lord Huntingtower, and other Collin's Baronetage, I. 70-76, for an children. account of thin ancient family. Lionel, DY.SART, Eliz.vbetb, Countess of, the second Earl of Dvsart, elde.-it mn of the eldest daughter, succeeded her father in the Countess, hail, during the lifetime of his title. She was a woman of uncommon mother, the style of Lcml Huntingtower, .and be.auty, .and of splendid talent;. She had a was chosen M.P. for O.Nfor(l, 1678 and 1683. wonderfid quick-ness ni ap|u'eheasion, and He succeeded his mother in the earldcmi of an auiaziug vivacity in conversation. She Dysart, 1690; was cliosen raeralier fi^r the liad studied not only divinity and history, county of Suffolk in 1()98 ; and re-chosen butmathematicsand philosophy. Cromwell 1700 and 1701. On the accession of Queen himself— the stern Cromwell—was unable to Anne he had the offer of the |iatent of a resist her blanilishments. She married, baron of England, which he declined ; and first. Sir Lionel Talmash of Helmingham, was a fourth time chosen for the county of in the couoty of Suffolk, Bart., who died in Suffolk ; also high steward of Iiiswich, <inil 1069 : and on the 5th December 1670 she dieil 3d Feliru.ary 172H. His lordsliip obt.iined from King Charles II. a charter married in 1680 Grace, eldest daughter (ami under the great seal, ratifying the letters co-heiress with her sister Marv, wife of the patent to her father, William, Earl of Earl of Bradf..rd), of Sir Thom.as Wilhra- Dysart, and bis heirs therein expressed, of ham of Woo Ihey, in the county of Chester, the titles of Earl of Dysart and Lord Hunt- ingtower, dated atOx'foril, Bart., and by her had a son, Lionel, Lord 3d Augu.st 1643 ; Huntingtower, who pre-deceased his fiither. and as these titles had been resigned into Li ird Huntingtower married Miss Henrietta the hands of His Majesty by the Countiss, Hesige, a relative of the Duke of Devon- he of new granted thera to the Countess, shire, by whom he had a son, Lionel, third and to such of her issue as she might nomi- Earl of Dysart, who succeeded his grand- nate in writing under her hand at any time father in 1726. He was invested with the of her life, and the heirs of such nominee, Order of the Thistle in 1743, and died in the eldest always succeeding without divi- if 1770, in his sixty-thii-d year. A grand- sion, a female ; and in failure of such daughter of his lordship, Maria Caroline nomination, then, and in that case, the Maimers, was married to Viscount Macduff, heirs whatever of the said Countess to suc- eldest son and heir-ajiparent of Alexander, ceed without division, with the former pre- third Earl of Fife, and dying at Edinburgh cedency. The Countess married, secondly, without issue, in December 180.5, was buried at Petersh.am, 17th February 1671-2, John, at Helmingham. A very picturesque and Duke of Lauderdale, K.G., His Majesty's beautiful portrait of this lady was published Commissioner for Scotland. After their in 1807, as follows :— marriage they made a progress round the country, where they were attended and re- " Stranger, or friend, in this faint sketch behold ceived with regal pomp and respect. All An angel's fieure in a mortal mnnid; of In human beant.v thou-^h the form excell'd. the power Scotland was vested in their hands for many years. His Each fe.ture yielded to the mind it held ; Grace died Heaven claim'd the spark of its ffitherial flame, 24th August_1683. The Duchess survived And earth return'd it spot'ess as it came : till June 1696, and was buried in Petersham So die the eond, the beauteous, and the kind. church on the 16th of that month. By the And. dying, leave a lesson to mankind." Duke she had no issue ; but by Sir Lionel Lionel, the fourth Earl of Dysart, was Talmash her Grace had eleven children, of born in 1736. He succeeded his father, whom six died young. the third Earl, in 1770; and dying in 1799, in the sixty-third year of his age, without issue, was succeeded by his brother, fifth Earl of Dysart, Wilbrahani, who was horn in 1739, and inherited the EDGAR, The Eight Rev. HErniT.- This estates of the Wilbrahams at Woodhey, in clergyman, whose name is omitted in all the Cheshire. He was an officer in the Royal catalogues annexed to the Episcopal Church Navy at an early age, and afterwards went History of Scothand, was consecrated at into the army. He attained the rank of Cupar, in Fife, on the 1st November 1759, major, and then retired. He died without by the Bishops White, Falconer, Rait, and issue, when the peerage devolved on his only Alexander. He was formerly pastor of a surviving sister, Louisa, Countess of Dysart, congregation at Arbroath. 'The reason of who was born in 1745, and married in 1765 the omission now mentioned is perhaps fur- John Manners, Esq. of Grantham Grange, nished by the circumstance that Mr Edgar in the county of Lincoln, by whom (who was at first appointed coadjutor to Bishop died in 1792) her ladyship had a large White. It is perfectly certain, however, family. She was succeeded by hergrandson, that he succeeded his principal in the super- Lionel William John Talmash, Earl of intendence of the district of Fife, and con- PIFESHIRE BIOGRAPHY. ELL tinued to perform his dutiea, there as long friends he would have re-crossed the Atlantic as he lived. The period of his death is no- last year from interest in the causes and where recorded, but it admits of no doubt probable consequences of the deplorable civil that he survived his predecessor at least war now raging in the States. He had for several years. years said that he had outlived the American ELLICE, The Eight Hon. Edw.U!D, race of statesmen—that Calhoun, Webster, M.P., claimed no pedigree beyond his de- and Clay were the last of that class. He scent from several generations of freeholders said the old Anglo-Saxon m.aterial w.a3 stiU in the county of Aberdeen, believed to be left in sufficient abumlauee for a fresh sup- descendants of one original settler of their ply ; but that the intelligent, instructed, and surname who crossed the borders from the wealthy classes had thrown away the staff southern part of the island during the civil from their hands by the concession of uni- wars. His own family, we believe, in the versal suffrage, and an equal vote to every middle of the last century generally followed foreigner who had landed twelve months on agricultural pursuits, till his grandfather the shores of America. Tins fatal poUtical engaged in business in the Transatlantic mistake, he said, was aggravated by the States on the American war of independence. weakness of the Executive in a Feder.al Mr ElUce's father, a man of good commer- Union which separate States' rights. For cial business in the state of New York, years he had openly said in society, and being a loyalist, removed to Montreal, in WTitten to every correspondent at home and Canada. The f.ather there founded the great abroad, that a political crisis was impend- mercantile house of Inglis, EUice, & Co., ing, which could only involve an internecine and before the end of the last century the civil war—that a contest between Protection firm established a house in the city of and Free Trade, between slave and free London. The father had a large family of labour, and between the gentry of the South sons and daughters, of whom Edward, the and the men of the North, must ensue, termi- subject of our present memoir, was the third nating in a mortal strife. He was at Nice son. He was bom in Golden Square, Lon- when the first Wood was shed, and he wrote his opinion home that the contest woidd be of considerable duration ; that it was one he remained there, or wh.at rank he gained practicaUy for " lioundaries" between the in competition with his schoolfellows, is two classes of States ; that in its earlier unknown ; but the instruction of such a courses it would necessitate an inconvertible public school was obviously a great advan- paper currency, ending virtuaUy in national tage to him. He was then sent to the b.inkiTiptcy and grievious suffering; and Scottish University of St Andrews, where that the war must be fought out untU it he remained a considerable time. Mr EUice ended in the complete independence of the never claimed any great proficiency in the Southerners, or in their temporary conquest dead languages, but he used to say that at and social ruin. The latter result, through least he had acquired his own living tongue, good and evil report, he disbeheved ; but he and a love of ancient history and classical held that if the North succeeded by their biography.